Lusciuos Magazine

Head over to Princess Misia!!! The fall issue of her online magazine is out and it's great!

At the moment one thing is stopping me a bit with the blogging and that is the food photography! I don't have fancy camera nor have I much experience with that. And I think that is my main problem. So now I am reading everything about it I can find and study the photography of bloggers I adore for their photos. One of my favourite sources is Marta from Princess Misia. Her work is just so pecise and awesome!

Chocolate Chip Date Cookies

 

These are amazing!!! Takes chocolate chip cookies to a whole new level - a healthy and super delicious one!
Secret ingredient are dates! They are the sweetener and give the cookies a nice caramel flovour. Ground almonds make them gluten free and adds protein, Vitamin E and Omega 3. These will totally satisfy a sweet tooth.

The recipe is adopted by Hemsley + Hemsley (check them out. They do excellent food!)

How to:
Preheat oven to 180°C
-100g dates (make a paste out of them, throw in a food processor or blender or very finely chop them. If they are a little too dry pour over boiled water and let sit for about 10 mins, then discard water)
-250g ground almonds

 -85g organic grass-feed butter, room temperature
- half tsp baking powder
-pinch of salt
-100g of the darkest chocolate you can find, chop roughly

Mix all together. Then form bite-sized balls and press flat on a lined baking tray. Bake for 10-15 mins or until golden brown. Cookign time depends on the shape of your cookies. Let allow to cool for at least 10 mins (I know this is one of the hardest parts).

Enjoy with your favorite cuppa!

Two notes:
1. You can even eat them raw! Form into balls and keep in the fridge.
2. When baking I have something healthy to nibble on.  Fruit, veggie sticks with a dip or a (greek) yogurt. Otherwise there wouldn't be much cookie dough left.

Cauliflower Tabbouleh With Pomegranate seeds

This is an easy recipe for a light meal or side dish which you can also prepare ahead and then just throw together. I think it would be nice to add a little protein to it as well for example some chicken or fish.

How-to (makes about 3 servings)

-grind one head of cauliflower so it's rice-like (I've read that you can do it with your blender as well but in my case that turned out too fine)
-chop a handful of parsley and some almonds
Dressing:
Unfortunately I didn't wirte down the exact amounts and am now just trying to reconstruct.
-start with 3 Tbsp thahini
-add 2 Tbsp lemon juice + 1 Tsp olive oil  + salt + pepper
- now it's up to you: you can add a little bit more lemon juice or a bit water to make it thinner (which I did) and season to your taste

I had my dressing in a mason jar and the other ingredients each on it's own in tupperware in the fridge (today I finished the last bit and I prepared everthing 2 days age and the cauliflower was still nice and moist. Although I recommend to chop the parsley fresh each time). So whenever you want your salad just throw all together and enjoy!

Coconut Berryliciousness

 Todays breakfast was inspired by Abigail O'Neils Neopolitian Smoothie. First time ever that I made a smoothie with young coconut meat but it was soo delicious!!! In my smoothies I love to use berries. They are sweet but without much suger and they are packed with antioxidants -very good for your skin! Coconut is a good source of good fat and in this smoothie will keep full for hours! Flax seeds contain healthy fats as well as good protein. To make it taste even  more like a treat I added cacao powder -also full of antioxidants! And for added sweetness and to make it more creamy I blended in a banana as well. Unfortunately I ran out of chia seeds so I topped with mullberries (taste like gummy bears) and cacao nibs for an extra choco kick.

Makes 1 big or 2 medium servings

-Meat and  water of a young coconut

-1 cup of berries (I used half raspberries half blueberries)

-1 banana
-3 Tbsp flax seeds
-1 Tbsp cacao powder
Blend for about a minute and top with favourite toppings. Enjoy!

Next time I will try and add some spinach or kale and only half a banana but chia seeds. And because it's a really sweet smoothie I wouldnt top it again with mulberries ( and reserve them for green smoothies),but may be some almond butter. You could also add shelled hemp seeds which are an excellent source of protein.

Second off

As this is a newstart and I haven't done it before I thought I might need a little bit of an introduction. Since this is a food blog I think I should explain what I eat. Plainly I could say I eat everthing. That's regarding all the forms of eating out there -"normal" (meat) eater, vegetarian, vegan, raw, paleo, gluten and dairy free. I eat it all!
Because I don't believe religiously in THE ONE diet. I believe in moderation and that the bad things in a modern diet are the sugar overdoses and highly processed foods. I prefer natural food that ideally I prepared myself. Still I didn't completely figured out what works best for me but one thing I feel alot better without is bread. I don't know why and I seriously love bread believe me but I'd feel terribly bloated and it's just no good.
Besides I'm batteling binge eating. I'm really bad at stopping to eat sometimes. And although I eat a lot of healthy stuff if you eat half the jar of almond butter that's seriously bad. I have never been overweight but for a long time now I've tried to reduce my weight. I'm 5'9" and a lot of people told me when I was younger I could be a model but I slowly kept putting on weight and now with a body fat percentage of 33% I want to go into reverse.
In my early teens til the end of high school I did more than ten years of horseback riding and that has been all my exercise (indeed not very much) and just the last two years I discovered that I actually really like working out. I tried a couple of classes at uni -taekwondo and a basic fitness class which was good for gaining a basic strenght and stamina but as it never changed it became boring very fast. Last semester I discovered HIIT and kettlebells and totally loved it! A real challenge but you feel so strong! Sadly this semester I can't do any of theses classes due to my time table. Maybe I'll join a gym though I never thought I could like them but I'll do a trial class next monday and will let you know. Because fitness is very important to me and the gym does lesmills classes and thai boxing which I would very much like to try. Still I know the most work will be to control my eating.
So far for today,

Lili

Renewal

So this is my poor blog! About one and a half year ago I wrote the last post here and in that past time some things have changed. I have changed as well. When I started the blog I wanted it to be my inspiration board and a place where I can share my own creations - DIY-wise. But these days it's not what I want to do anymore. In this last year and a half I only used the dashboard of this blog to follow other blogs and now inspired by these blogs my interests changed to health, healthy food and fitness. Now I want to use this blog as my recipe collection to inspire other people to live and eat well. Even so maybe once in a while you will find a little DIY here :)